What a wonderful first novel! Set in multicultural downtown Manchester – definitely not the one of the Games – The Front focuses on four low-lifes living a life centred on drugs, fags, booze and meaningless sex. Their conversation is based on expletives and obscenities. Only one has any ambition (and that’s really his wife’s) – to badger the council into providing a semi on a halfway decent estate. The quartet’s attempt to rob a local Asian supermarket goes badly wrong, bringing down on their collective neck not just the Old Bill but also The Man, a Mr Big of the Manchester drugs and vice scene.

This has all the potential of a very noir novel indeed, with gloomy stereotypical characters drifting to miserable disaster. But none of Heller’s characters is a stereotype: they’re sharply and affectionately distinguished, each with his or her own code of morals. We soon tout for the misguided goodies amongst the real baddies. Suzie lifts herself from being a downtrodden moll; Wendy, house proud to the point of abusing her inadequate husband, becomes a tower of strength and in doing so discovers real happiness. When the generally kindly and decent police at last run everyone to earth, justice is almost done, and the reader sighs with pleasurable relief.

Heller clearly knows her Manchester, and her dialogue, whether in patois or simply in a working class register, is absolutely spot on. The complicated plot is taut, the pace brisk. In all a very fine debut novel. More, please.